It’s A Man’s World. Polly Courtney

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СКАЧАТЬ looked at the patio. Matt was looking at her, eyebrows raised. ‘It’s . . .’ She tried again to push the word out, but she just couldn’t do it. ‘A niche magazine,’ she said, eventually. ‘You won’t have heard of it.’

      ‘Well!’ cried her mother, clearly perplexed that the news wasn’t more significant, given the build-up. ‘That’s . . . fabulous!’

      She didn’t look as disappointed as she might have done, thought Alexa – presumably because she saw the role as offering more potential for her daughter to make time for Matt. Within seconds, she was popping the cork on a bottle of champagne.

      ‘Well done, Alexa!’ she cried, filling the glasses.

      ‘Hear hear!’ said her dad. ‘Well done.’

      ‘Yes,’ Matt added woodenly. ‘Well done.’

      Alexa held up her glass as the toast was made, feeling shaky and slightly sick.

      Chapter 6

      ‘Pig Out?’

      ‘Hogwarts?’

      ‘Pig Headed?’ Derek sniggered and scratched his goatee, clearly finding the whole thing hilarious. ‘No, hang on, how about Pigs Might Fly? Ha!’

      Alexa sighed. They were nearly two hours into the weekly editorial meeting and they’d barely scratched the surface of features. For the last ten minutes, conversation had revolved around possible funny headlines for Paddy’s first editorial assignment – a trip to a Suffolk pig farm. Alexa suspected that the location had been carefully chosen by the other members of the team to ensure maximum ridicule for the junior writer.

      ‘How about Pig Tales!’ roared Derek, looking around the table for a response.

      Marcus, the ginger-haired news editor, guffawed appropriately and Sienna let out a girly squeal, rearranging her blouse to display a little more cleavage.

      Alexa cleared her throat. ‘Shall we move on? I’m sure the features team will come up with something suitably funny.’ She looked at the balding, energetic features editor who nodded back at her. ‘Neil? What else?’

      Before Neil could speak, Derek leaned forward, his head cocked aggressively to one side.

      ‘How about,’ he said, in a slow, condescending tone, ‘we carry on going round the table, like we’ve been doing, shall we? That’s tends to be how we do it, see.’ He smiled patronisingly at her.

      Alexa managed to nod, despite the burning rage inside her. There were so many things she wanted to say. They weren’t going round the table; they were going through the magazine, section by section, as was customary in such meetings. She had looked to Neil because, as features editor, he was best placed to summarise the next topic of discussion. And to use that disdainful tone in front of the entire staff was not just unprofessional; it was pathetic. Alexa remained silent.

      ‘Er . . . same as,’ said the scruffy young man next to Paddy, who, for reasons unknown to Alexa, was known as Biscuit. She remembered him from her first day; he’d been the one brandishing the voice-distorting megaphone. He was responsible for the jokes pages of Banter.

      ‘Any news on the Guy Thomas thing?’ asked someone.

      Biscuit screwed up his face. ‘He’s threatening to sue.’

      ‘Bastard.’

      ‘Fucker.’

      Alexa looked around, perturbed. ‘Sorry . . . could someone explain the Guy Thomas thing?’

      Derek sighed, loudly. ‘Could someone please explain the Guy Thomas thing, for the benefit of our managing director,’ he said, in a tired monotone.

      ‘We, um, printed a “fun fact” about him in the Celebrity Banter section,’ said Biscuit, not meeting Alexa’s eye. ‘Said he had a phobia of peas. He’s claiming it’s not a phobia, it’s an aversion.’

      ‘He’s going to court over an aversion to peas?’ Alexa frowned.

      ‘He always threatens.’

      Derek leaned forward again. He had the same look on his face as before.

      ‘Round here, you see, lawsuits come with the territory. Not a lot you can do about them.’

      Alexa disagreed, but said nothing.

      ‘Anyway! Good news,’ said Neil, tactfully changing the subject. ‘We’ve had Ricky Lewis confirmed as our lead feature next week. Got the green light for a “Love Rat Tells All” piece.’

      ‘Fan-fuckin’-tastic,’ said Derek, shaking his fist in what Alexa could only interpret as a display of jubilation. There were nods of respect from all round the room. A couple of men punched the air.

      Alexa said nothing. She didn’t share their enthusiasm. Ricky Lewis was a premiership footballer whose exploits, as far as she knew, included: drink-driving, speeding, cheating on his girlfriend with a teenage prostitute and then walking out on said girlfriend, who had taken him back and was five months pregnant with his child. Was it right, she wondered, to splash heroic images of such a man across the pages of a magazine aimed at impressionable young lads?

      ‘Love the angle, too,’ added Derek. ‘Really get him to talk – you might get some juicy tit-bits.’

      ‘Some sordid truths about the wife, maybe?’ someone else suggested.

      Neil nodded and jotted it down. Alexa nearly spoke out, but stopped herself. She was new to this market. There was clearly a lot for her to learn about what worked and what didn’t. If this was a feature that pulled in the readers, she could hardly speak out against it.

      ‘Other stuff . . .’ Neil was taking the lead as Alexa had suggested, she noted, his shiny pate bobbing from side to side as he skimmed down his list. ‘Ah, yes. This week’s Ten Sexiest is nurses, which is always a winner. I think there was only one that didn’t get her baps out, so that brings the nipple count to eighteen, from just the one feature.’

      Alexa joined in with the general noises of appreciation, finding herself inadvertently glancing down, checking that her own nipples were hidden away under the dark, shapeless top – one of five almost identical garments that had become her own unofficial uniform since the day one faux pas with the suit. She felt uneasy. Did they seriously use nipple count as a metric to gauge an edition’s prospects?

      ‘Then we’re just deciding on whether to do a men’s summer diet feature – “The Mankini Diet”, we were thinking – or just a how-to on barbecuing. Or maybe some sort of how-much-sex-do-you-need-to-burn-off-the-calories type thing.’

      Alexa tuned out as various suggestions were bandied about. It amazed her, how differently things happened here compared to two floors down. At Hers, features writing was seen as an art form. It was hard enough just to think of a theme that was topical – not just appropriate for the time of year, but based on real-life global trends. On discovering that, say, a wave of fifty-somethings were taking up extreme sports, or that refugees were crossing the channel and moving in with local pensioners, the challenge would be to find a hapless features writer willing to find a fifty-something mountain-biker or a Dover landlady СКАЧАТЬ